


Last Stop Flatbush Avenue & Brooklyn College

by thegirlthatisclumsy



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Freeform, Gen, Not Beta Read, ficdrop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 17:12:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegirlthatisclumsy/pseuds/thegirlthatisclumsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's hands ache.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Stop Flatbush Avenue & Brooklyn College

**Author's Note:**

> picspiration fic-
> 
> drive by tumblr fic. not edited. not beta'd.

It isn’t just the sheer size of the city now. It was a big sprawling dirty thing when he was a kid, but now it’s just so… much more. It’s louder. It’s more colorful. So full of things that make discordant sound and seem to be erupting in lights. 

It’s overwhelming and… he thinks he hates it here. It’s nothing like what he left and he feels like he’s being tricked every time he steps outside his apartment door. 

That this is some nightmare that he’s walking around in where people sound like people but they talk a different language that he has no way or means of learning. Everything he knew and loved is gone. Dead and gone and so far out of his grasp that his hands ache trying to grasp at nothing.

 

Clutching at air and snow and cold and finding ~~Bucky~~ ~~Peggy~~ ~~Erskine~~ gone, one handgrasp not strong enough to hold on long enough or not fast enough or too late to find them and keep them.

The subway clacks along, and even that sounds different now, to parts of the city that existed on paper and talks when he was a skinny nothing and now are used and broken and old. He never even got to see them new before the years wore them down.

He tracks the city’s changes and files them away with gray and black lines of graphite and nothing makes sense, but that’s okay because in this he can erase what he doesn’t like and start again. It’s a small comfort.

 

It’s not really enough.

She talks about Iron Man and he wonders why he should care. It’s Howard’s kid, but Steve just… can’t muster up the energy to give a shit. He can’t even work up the wherewithal to ask a pretty gal for her name or respond to the gentleman who calls him a moron.

Steve doesn’t think he’s a moron. He’s out of place.

He buys time at a gymnasium and takes this helpless rage out against cloth bags filled with sand. He focuses all of it at his target - the memories are ghosts and he knows he can’t fight those with his fists, but he can make them the bag and that’s almost good enough.

The aches in his hands only last for half a ride back to his apartment but he presses his fingers into his palms to make the hurt last, hoping to make it lessen the tightness in his throat and chest.

It doesn’t and all he can do is listen to the train and the sounds of the city go by.


End file.
